Taste Archive

Some friends have been saying for a long while that as I do so much travelling, why don’t I write about that as well as all the tech and media I talk about.

Well, in the first in a series of travel reviews about our recent trip to the fabulous Scottish Isle of Arran, here’s a taster of the couple of hours I spent at the Whiting Bay Golf Course on the south east of the island.

At 20 miles long and 10 miles wide, you wouldn’t have expected to find SEVEN golf courses on Arran. But as the ferry trundles towards it from Ardrossan, you can’t help but see the adverts talking about the fabulous views and hospitality that awaits all ages and proficiencies of the great game of golf.

Last Sunday, I took the opportunity to let my wife – Ashley – do a spot of reading on the balcony of our lovely B&B – Ellangowan House – while I trotted off to thwack 9 holes for the bargain “after 4pm” price of £10!

I had rung up earlier to book a tee. I asked if they hired out clubs and was told, “We can give you a set for free but they aren’t very good!”

Replying that neither was my golf, I duly turned up at the allotted hour.

The lady behind the bar was very helpful in showing me a 10 hole route that would get me back to the clubhouse in time for a pint of Arran Ale before she clocked off for the evening.

So off I went.

Now I’m no Monty, but I managed to keep in single figures for all the holes which are mostly par 3s and 4s.

One hole called “The Plateau” was an incredible ride. Just 81 yards, it called for a skied shot “up and over” with very little room for error.

Suffice to say it got the better of me as I over-egged it a couple of times before landing a few feet away from the pin for an embarrassing 7!

The main wow-factor of this course is not that it’s just so well maintained and while I was there, virtually empty, but that the views are simply stunning.

Click on the above panorama which I made with Windows Live Photo Gallery to see just how beautiful the sight from the top of the course is.

Being on my own with not a soul around, it took me about 80 minutes trudging up and down to finish the recommended ten holes, none of which disappointed.

Back in the clubhouse, I was warned not to let Ashley know it was the highlight of my holiday so far, and settle down to a well earned beer!

I can honestly see a return trip to Arran for a seven courses in seven days adventure.

It’s not often you get such value for money in quality of course and scenery to boot!

Taken at the top of Painswick Beacon in The Cotswolds, Ashley and I were having a romantic moment after a long walk in which I’d taken a wrong turn and nearly had us squished like a fox on a B road!

I’d surprised her with a trip having suggested she pack a swimsuit and her passport.

As we drove down the M4 she kind of twigged as we zoomed past the Heathrow turn off!

We stayed at Byfield House which caught my eye as it’s the number one B&B in the Cotwolds on Trip Advisor.

Jill and Brett’s hospitality was just amazing. Greeted like long lost friends with TWO bottles of wine, we were sloshed before we got to the pub to devour wood pigeon, duck and fish and chips!

£75 a night to stay in an antiques haven, with a healthy breakfast instead of a heavy cooked one, meant were able to enjoy some great food after exploring the countryside at the Royal Oak and St Michaels Restaurant the following night who did us a nice chocolate cake for our anniversary….after we’d scoffed some sumptuous puddings and cheese!

[Loosens waistband.]

We had such a lovely time. Think everyone should make a trip this part of the world as it’s just 2 hours max from London.

Seems we have a habit of climbing hills with romantic notions.

The last time was when we got engaged!

Great idea!

Nick Clegg’s crowd sourcing site has caused quite a stir in this Web 2.0 world.

“We’ve had an excellent response so far, with over 2,205 ideas, 7,419 comments and 18,000 votes in our first day.”

Would like to have found it in the search results instead of mining it through news articles so am doing my bit for SEO – Your Freedom!

Get on it and help make a change!

Last year I wrote about the Mix Online Archivist. A desktop app, it was one of the only quick solutions to download and archive tweets or hashtag info from Twitter.

Well yesterday the guys released a turbo version on the web.

The Archivist will let you save tweets on the go and provide some fab analysis in a quick and easy to read format.

Along with your profile you can save 3 archives right now and say whether they’re private or public.

Drilling in it’ll show tweets over time, top users, tweets v retweets, top associate words with the tweets, top urls thta have been clicks on and the sources of the tweets.

Drill in again and you can see great visualizations of who’s been most prolific or influential with those words.

Everything is downloadable to excel for easy data manipulation too!

Check it out here: The Archivist

When the Windows Phone launched a couple of weeks ago, so did a new service from Microsoft called My Phone.

I’d been using it for a while in Beta but the update has really got my attention because of some very cool features.

How about if you’ve misplaced your phone at home or left it on a train? Bloody annoying isn’t it!

The way My Phone works is to synch all your photos, docs, texts etc etc with the cloud under your Windows Live ID AND your phone’s last known location:

Here’s what the website looks like now I’m signed in. On the left is a self-explanatory menus of all your phones bits and pieces that have been backed up.

You can see my phone was last backed up last night – you can set it to synch automatically.

Click to find your lost phone and you’re presented with a “See map” option:

Up pops a Bing map with where my phone was when I synched last!

You’ll also notice some premium features being trialled to:

You can have the system ring your phone and it’ll work even if the phone is set to silent so no worries there!

Locking the phone is easy but obviously be careful with Erasing – last resort for that one.

To sign up go to: http://myphone.microsoft.com

More on other features next week!

Check out the new TV ad for the Microsoft Windows Phone I wrote about on the Microsoft Advertising Blog last week.

The phone is positioned as having an operating system which can cope with the demands of both work tasks and play stuff like social networking, web and music.

Not sure how Mark Zuckerberg’s lawyers will like this “aligned” branding effort from Hawaii, but while on honeymoon on Waikiki we spotted a guy doing portraits in the street using a tablet PC to draw digital portraits of willing sitters.

A refreshing change from the charcoal-mongers we’re used to:

Ashley and I splashed out a whole $15 on the above which we had done in Pike Place Market in Seattle……and no he didn’t get a tip for helping me lose 30lbs!

Picked up this canny little piece of kit from Steve Clayton.

Aaron Zinman’s philosophy with personas is:

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant.

Personas demonstrates the computer’s uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name.

It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

Luckily “online” is represented accurately and the “sport” bit must be my incessant talking about cricket.

Did I say I had tickets for the day at The Oval where we regained The Ashes from Australia but couldn’t go becaue I was on honeymoon!?

Check it our for yourself at: http://personas.media.mit.edu

You’ve read the reviews and watched the videos, now you have a chance to pre-order a copy of Windows 7 from £49.99 at the Microsoft Store from midnight tonight!

Remember if you are replacing an older version of Windows with Windows 7 once it arrives on 22 October, a clean install of the operating system and the installation of an internet browser will be required.

Check out http://www.microsoft.com/windows for more info!

Amazed that rail ticket machines in this country don’t have QWERTY layouts for typing in required information.

Might sound silly, but the brain takes a while to engage with the above letter formation when trying to buy a ticket.

Add up thousands of people having similar difficulties and you have 1000s of minutes wasted and I bet a lot of lost revenue and missed trains.